Santorum Suspends Campaign

The development means that Mitt Romney is now the certain GOP nominee to take on President Barack Obama in November, as Santorum was his main challenger. While Romney still needs to win several hundred delegates to clinch the nomination, Santorum’s departure from the race leaves his path unhindered.

Santorum had canceled two events earlier Tuesday while adding an afternoon event that turned out to be a news conference.

Hogan Gidley, the campaign’s communications director, said the two morning events were canceled to allow Santorum and his wife, Karen, to “settle in at home” with three-year-old daughter Isabella after her weekend hospitalization.

Known as Bella, the child was born with Trisomy 18, a serious chromosomal condition that interferes with development. Half of patients with the condition do not survive past the first week of life, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Campaign aides have acknowledged that Pennsylvania, the state he represented in Congress, is a must-win for his candidacy when it holds its primary on April 24.

Santorum’s once double-digit lead there slipped to single digits in a recent poll, and the cancellation of campaign events Monday and again on Tuesday morning stoked media speculation that Santorum might drop out in the face of front-runner Romney’s commanding lead.